PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — A 2-year-old woman is the second particular person in Cambodia to die of hen flu this week, and the third this yr, the nation’s Well being Ministry has introduced.
Laboratory exams confirmed that the woman, who lived within the southeastern province of Prey Veng, died Monday with H5N1 avian influenza, the ministry mentioned in an announcement.
The ministry had introduced on Sunday {that a} 50-year-old man in neighboring Svay Rieng province additionally had died from hen flu. In February, an 11-year-old woman turned the nation’s first hen flu fatality since 2014. Her father was additionally discovered to be contaminated however survived.
In keeping with a world tally by the U.N.‘s World Well being Group, from January 2003 to July 2023, there have 878 {cases} of human an infection with H5N1 avian influenza reported from 23 international locations, 458 of them deadly. Cambodia had recorded 58 {cases} since 2003 of people contaminated with hen flu.
“Since 2003, this virus has unfold in hen populations from Asia to Europe and Africa, and to the Americas in 2021, and has change into endemic in poultry populations in lots of international locations,” the WHO says on its web site. “Outbreaks have resulted in tens of millions of poultry infections, a number of hundred human {cases} and plenty of human deaths. Human {cases} have been reported principally from international locations in Asia, but in addition from international locations in Africa, the Americas and Europe.”
The USA’ Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention mentioned final month that hen flu outbreaks have been on the rise globally, with greater than 21,000 outbreaks the world over between 2013 and 2022. Fowl flu solely not often infects people.
Scientists fear that rising {cases} of H5N1, significantly in animals which have frequent contact with people, may result in a mutated model of the illness that might unfold simply between folks, triggering one other pandemic.
Chhuon Srey Mao, the 22-year-old mom of the {dead} woman, instructed The Related Press by telephone from Chhmar Lort village that her daughter fell sick on Oct. 1 with signs of coughing, excessive temperature and vomiting. The woman obtained remedy from a neighborhood doctor for 5 days, however was despatched on Oct. 5 to the capital Phnom Penh for superior care when her situation worsened. She died on the kids’s hospital.
The mom mentioned that from late September, a number of chickens in her village, together with not less than 4 of her personal, had died. She added that she had discarded the chickens that died, not cooking them for food. Folks have caught the virus each from home fowl and from wild birds comparable to geese.
“I don’t know why my daughter would contract hen flu as a result of she by no means touched or ate the {dead} chickens,” Chhuon Srey Mao mentioned, “However I presume that she might have change into contaminated with the virus when she performed within the yard, as she usually did, the place the chickens had been.”
She mentioned the 5 surviving members of her household are in good well being, however she is fearful about them. Well being officers have been to her village to deploy a virus-killing spray at her residence and others, and suggested all of the villagers to report in the event that they get sick.